A cargo vehicle with 40 overcrowded Central American migrants overturned on a road in the municipality of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in the state of Chiapas, southeastern Mexico, local authorities reported this Sunday.
After the first investigations, the authorities explained that the driver of the vehicle, a man of Tzotzil origin, lost control of the steering wheel due to speeding on a dirt road with long curves and plunged into a ravine where the foreigners, coming from of Guatemala, fell.
Police reports revealed that the accident occurred at 0230 hours (0830 GMT) on a road that connects with the central zone of Chiapas, free of military surveillance and agents of the National Migration Institute (INM). The accident that occurred at dawn this Sunday left six migrants injured.
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The inhabitants of the community told EFE that prior to the accident they saw the vehicle with a dry cargo box, which did not carry license plates, where the crowded migrants were travelling, circulating at full speed as they were being chased by National Guard agents.
In the area they were helped by paramedics from the San Cristóbal Red Cross and Civil Protection personnel, who assessed the injured, and then transferred 6 adults, including a woman, to a hospital where they received medical attention.
According to medical sources, the 6 migrants who were admitted during the early hours of Sunday are stable, with blows to the body and will be under observation for a few hours.
After the accident, the rest of the migrants scattered around the area to hide from immigration agents.
In recent months, foreigners without a transit permit have been seeking illegal means to travel through the Mexican country and many have had accidents.
“Leaving his family indebted with thousands of pesos or dollars, who rent the service of the “coyotes” (human traffickers),” said Roberto Trujillo, lawyer and defender of Human Rights of Migrants.
Because it is a border with Guatemala, the state of Chiapas is an obligatory passageway for migrants seeking to reach the United States. However, they do so on roads in poor condition or controlled by organized crime.
Traveling crammed into trailers is one of the most dangerous ways migrants use to clandestinely cross Mexico to the United States, something for which they pay traffickers thousands of dollars.
Under this modality, on December 9, 2021, a tragic accident was recorded, when a trailer overturned on the highway from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to Chiapa de Corzo, in the state of Chiapas, in which 56 migrants died.
